Guild Wars 2

They would win a lot with it. It’s a bloming market, also, no botters on consoles.

Neverwinter just went on Xbox too not long ago, and it was a f2p medicore game to begin with. So yea, about the ammount of work it would take… I don’t know that, you don’t know it either.

MMOs do work on consoles without being cross-platform, TESO is the best example. I have it on the Xbox and it’s full of people. They also gave people an opportunity to transfer from PC, and it works much better as an online “virtual world” experience with a proximity voice chat and not a chat window.

It’s not dumbed down, the controls fit perfectly, and TESO also has a limited skill bar like GW/GW2. It also looks magnificent, the graphics are actually multiple times better than on the PC, with a much higher framerate too, so would be in the case of GW2. The CPU of the xbone is two modules of 4core AMD Jaguars, adding up to an effective 8 cores at 1.75 Ghz. You don’t have to be afraid of performance issues.

TESO also has a cash shop, just like GW2, with cosmetic items, and it’s getting frequent updates, a new DLC area just rolled out not long ago. It’s actually a game that’s very much like GW2 in a lot of ways, even better at some areas, albeit lacking in end game and suffering from severe leveling fatugue, but that’s a different topic. Its console version also rolled out a year after its PC release.

The difficulties I see here are China, and maybe porting, but I would risk it.

Good advices were taken in terms of giving the characters some drama and hardships. I think many people pointed that out in LS1, me included, that you have to go a bit deeper, do more characterization if you really want to press these NPCs so much. Not really that you have to kill Belinda, but of course it’s one of the ways to do somethig, anything, that changes anything and makes these characters have an actual story arc.

So I was really happy seeing the death scene, for like a few seconds, until I heard the absolutely terrible dialogue that happned after it. So I lost hope currently.

Now I’m just covinced that the writer for these dialogues is just simply not qualified to write for an AAA game, and that’s all.

As long as the dialogue stays like this, I think it doesn’t matter how much of a good job everyone else does. It’s like having the Benny Hill music instead of Hans Zimmer in a movie. And it’s sad because I want to shake hands with person who did the Eternal Alchemy animation sequence and smile into his face and say “That was amazing, bro.”

Clyan.1593:

I really doubt we are going to see abaddon unless in a fractal. Abaddon’s dead.

Nothing’s dead in fiction. Say the essence of the god corrupted Kormir on the long run, or maybe Kormir never got the upper hand when he fused with the corpse of Abaddon. It was actually Abaddon all along, he just trolled everyone by appearing to have lost. He was chained and had no way out, and he’s the local Tzeench. His plans plans have plans.

But enough talking. I think devs might actally have a policy against using anything that anyone ever came up with on the forums, in fear of plagiarism claims. I might actually decrease the chances by posting about it.

If this plot turns out to be about the shenanigans of Abaddon (ie.: Kormir), then I might forgive 2 months from the last 2 years of this trainwreck.

Have her still be the God of Lies, having been responsible for waking the dragons and imprisoning the other gods. I’d buy that for real cash. Heck, I could write it.

zoejo.2317:

So, does anyone who says the game is dying/losing players/failing financially, have any reliable source?

Yes.

http://oi62.tinypic.com/14cwa5i.jpg

Sales are directly accessible at NCSoft’s website.

There is a reason why they are moving to the Chinese market, even with the through overhauls that the Chinese developers are allowed to impose on the games. In a sense, it saves them from actually having to fix anything or lead the game into any direction anymore, as by moving to the international market the game will become too big and too easy to maintain for it to ever be able to die.

Incidentally, the little force that was on ArenaNet to make the game good is now gone, they can lean back and collect the dosh from the few addicts that add up to a sustainable amount. Instead, I’d expect more cash shop shenanigans since now the percentage at which it’ll increase the income is even larger, considering the growth of the playerbase with the addition of the Asian market.

Of course whether I’m right or wrong will probably be seen at the LS2 release update notes, and I wish with all my heart that I am. I’m always ready to be positively surprised. But the livestreams feel like public m**********n for reddit, so there’s that too.

But yes. The game sales are falling. Have been since launch and it’s an increasing fall. That’s quite easy to look up. We live in the Age of Information.

Might aswell participate.

I’m incredibly poor due to despising any form of farm or grind. I’ve never had more than 30g on my acount. If I would sell the Eternity the money could probably last for the next 6 years (if the game lasts that long).

Farzo.8410:

chronus.1326:

ZilentNight.5089:

munkiman.3068:

Maguuma wastes looked like that in GW, devours and all.

This is most likely the area called Dry Top

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dry_Top

Makes sense.

Although I was expecting more of something like The Falls.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Falls

We have way too many brown dust maps already.

Stop. Linking. Guild Wars 1. Stuff.

Feels. And. Nostalgia. Too. Stronk.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Vabbi

ZilentNight.5089:

munkiman.3068:

Maguuma wastes looked like that in GW, devours and all.

This is most likely the area called Dry Top

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dry_Top

Makes sense.

Although I was expecting more of something like The Falls.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Falls

We have way too many brown dust maps already.

Farzo.8410:

Meh, the trailer didn’t look too interesting.

I gladly accept a new permanent zone though.

Is it gonna be a permanent zone?

phys.7689:

gw1 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Doesn’t have anything like that.

There are about 4 type of skills in the game that repeat ad infinitum and make up 70% of all the skills in the game: damage skills, gap closers, retreat skills, and buffs. The rest of the skills, and even some of these are completely useless in their iterations. The additional conditions or boons are often entirely inconsequential, along with combo fields that are not really a skill to pull off in a zerg anyway and add about +10% to a boss fight that is still a tediously long rotation spam except maybe Teq but that is exactly why everyone fails it because the game doesn’t in any way make the player use and excercise his brain cells in any other content whatsoever.

Playstyles are forcefully linked to weapons, meaning you cannot have a favourite playstyle and a favourite weapon at the same time. More broadly speaking, if you do not favor two-handed swords, you might aswell forget the game.

Comes from a long way from Guild Wars were you could have and Assassin run around with a Scythe with a non-dagger crit damage build or a Warrior with a Staff when more energy was needed.

This game is a game of limitations, not a game of possibilities.

The skills system as well as the combat system and about the entire game was based around the terror of having to balance it afterwards. It is a steaming pile of kitten droppings from a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on it after they release it, just add more episodic content (DLC) because an MMO just seem to work that way from the outside when you are an amateur developer or a stupid publisher CEO who juggles around human resources like tarrot cards to get lucky.

This game was afraid of itself, and for no reason because they did a splendid job balancing GW for 7 years.

Lazyness is eating it away from the inside like cancer.

Like the 400gem monocle or the flaming gemshop armor that was so lazy at release that they had to change it due to demand.

Or the Krytan armor and the Primeval Armor and the rest are cash shop items instead of HoM rewards for GW players who farmed out Tormended Weapons to get to 50/50.

Vayne.8563:

chronus.1326:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people.

I won’t comment on the rest of your post, but this is completely 100% untrue. Creative people can play games for different reasons. My wife is an artist and loves this game because of the look and feel. She’s creative. There are so many ways to be creative without having creative “builds”.

I’d say a good portion of the people in my guild consider themselves creative people. There are writers, artists, song-writers, poets, actors.

There are plenty of creative people playing this game. It’s better than a lot of MMOs for creative people because it isn’t a linear as most of them.

I’ll rephrase my statement.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t for people who like to express their creativity this way. I’m an artist too and I sit in for an X-men movie too because I like how it looks and there is nothing creative that I do during it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You could always try Guild Wars (One), then. It has lots and lots of skills to choose from.

Basically this.

Or Path of Exile. Almost as diverse as Guild Wars was and it’s completely free.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people. It’s more cut to casual gamers hopping in and out here and then, like with fps shooters like Counter Strike or CoD. Most of the skills are even the exact same skill, with a slight damage difference, accross multiple classes. There isn’t really much diversity in functions. The Ele is the biggest lie since GW2 doesn’t have elemental damage like fire, water, lightning, or earth, like GW did. No native damage resistance or weakness of enemies to it either. No damage immunities and condition immunities either, save for bosses. In GW you couldn’t bleed or poision elementals, or blind creatures that were already blind. It was closer to a simplified d&d system in terms of complexity. Water elementals took double fire damage. I think the only thing that transferred to GW2 was the Destroyer’s immunity to burning.

These things were common back then. And yet nothing was completely immune to damage like the stupid WvW bosses. Maybe Shiro.

Guild Wars also had that “skills get more powerful as you allocate more points into their attributes” thing. It might be the game you are looking for.

It was the game we were all looking for when GW2 was coming out.

Fyrebrand.4859:

The question is, what would produce a better game: a focused plan worked on by a dedicated and experienced team, or a popularity contest voted on by a bunch of random players who don’t even know what they want half the time?

I think ANet is remarkably good at listening to feedback from fans and adapting to concerns from the community — but there is a reason they are the game devs and not us.

It’s already a mixture of both. The decisions of ArenaNet have changed throughout the game developement phase mainly due to demand from here and demand from there. The difference is that they were taken into consideration mainly out of fear and not because they were agreed with.

Due to this a lot of people, including founding members have let the company, effectively leaving about 300 new developers in a dead caracass of a former company, trying to emuate life by copying the deisions and actions of those who came before, but not really understanding the principles behind why Guild Wars became popular or successful or whatever.

Maybe they never considered it successful. I do not know how they saw the numbers. I consider proving the b2p model to the industry a colossal success. But games that do not operate by creativity-principle fail today.

Greatest games are built on simple systems that have an outstanding capacity to create complexity. Such as the TES games through mods, or Minecraft. It’s all simplicity through complexity. GW2 is just simplicity through simplicity.

A better game would require a team that understand the principles of creation in that sense. How simplicity can create complexity. It requires a set of relationships between the simple compartments, as well as a general understandng over how different they have to be. The beauty of it is that if done correctly, it does not close out simple-minded people who lack creativity, just like Guild Wars didn’t either. It’s just that those who don’t understand it see this as “luck”, while others get rich over creating things like LEGO.

MMORPGs operate differently than other genres. They want to emulate life. They operate like life:

The only ones having fun are addicts and artists.

Finding Sanity.1283:

If it wasnt for the sub

EQ2 is free-to-play now, bro. Has been for a while, along with EQ1.

Xae Isareth.1364:

In all honesty, I do actually hope GW2 gets hit with a wake up call of falling profits and player counts.

http://oi59.tinypic.com/r6zkgn.jpg

Belzebu.3912:

There are several issues with content voting.

• If most vote for content A, people that wanted the content B will feel frustrated and will pass the impression that content B will never happen, even if that may not be true
• Development takes a LONG time, and after the voting, players will keep asking about said content, also it may not be as viable as the developers thought it could be and if the idea get dropped the players will go crazy.
• It would be even worse if the player base was the ones saying what Anet should do, some popular ideas are impossible or really bad idea financially, and hear Anet refusing those popular ideas would make them look as a bad company.

Those are points from the top of my head.

Yea, those are the problems with majority vote and democracy. As far as I remember it is considered the most civilized form of human cooperation.

You allow it to determine your life on global scale, but not the direction of a computer game.

Someone hold me.

Consistency just achieved 500,000 RPM in its grave. You could thow it in the Kola Borehole and it would drill it down to Hell.

Dafomen.7892:

Stevizard.4926:

Sorry guys, but any customer-centered business must care about what causes customers to quit buying (or playing) their product.

[…]

Sincerely,
Stevizard

+1

When I was working for another MMO running studio, that company was ignorant for insights light these.
They basically didnt care about what anyone said if he wasnt a high paid suit, where most of them hadnt even a clue about the product itself, but had some fancy job titles and nice boards in theirs offices with some monetization statistics on it.

Trying to explain or convince them to listen to what their customers had to say even it wasnt a lawsuit was, despite all the internal and external smoke screen PR (where most of the revenue vanished in to anyway), like talking to a brick wall.
It was really weird because to me it seemed most of them just didnt want to understand whats going on, because they would have to step ‘out of line’.
They preferred to stay in their office ‘doing their job’, watching the ship sink and grabbing on what they can get.
I dont know, but thats the impression I got. And I saw the numbers, every working day.

Well, the best description about what happened next would be….a crash landing with many casualties beginning of course on the “lower end”….poor buggers.

If a company reaches a certain size, loosing touch with the basics is its biggest treat.

Anet seems to have reached that tipping point somewhere in between GW and GW2 with an integrated accelerator it seems.

To be fair, I probably should swap Anet with NCsoft.

Basically the same thing can be read at the Glassdoor page of ArenaNet too, which is what makes me so indifferent.

I’ve never seen a company come out of this. The world is changing. Customers are more self-aware, the smoke screens are becoming smaller and smaller relative to the size of the internet. There isn’t really enough money out there to lie so effectively anymore. For a while, maybe, but its becoming increasingly inefficient. Maybe that’s why a lot of companies just don’t care anymore and just want to grab as much money as they can while they still can. Nobody actually wants to provide a service anymore. It’s too much of a hassle.

I read lately a quote from somewhere, I don’t know what it was. It was that the first company which comes out and starts behaving like a normal person will become incredibly rich and well received.

Customers are growing tired of BS.
They see the BS better, and that sight isn’t going anywhere. And their mouths are not as open yet as they could be, but their wallets are closing sooner.

The first person who realizes that and gambles on honesty becomes incredibly rich.

First dev who comes here and says “You know what? You are right. Here’s what’s going on in the company now:” and lay out everything will be revered by the community and everyone will fight for him. The gamer community would kickstarter fund a guy like that up to buying up the entire company. And that’s probably not even a joke.

Sartharina.3542:

provide a large, consistent world for a massive playerbase to interact with, and hang out and socialize with friends and strangers in a virtual environment

What you are talking about can only be achieved if the real world is able to function the same way.

Cash.2385:

Maybe smaller maps with just two garrisons for wvw and an open field between the two for more battles.

This could actually be a good idea. Just a huge 1v1 between two worlds. Two huge, incredibly hard to take in fortresses. Minas Tirith style. And a big devastated warzone between them.

Both WvWvW maps are pretty large. A smaller, more cramped one would be an interesting experience. Simple but also relatively hard to coordinate, with all the battles taking place in the middle. As long as there aren’t any huge distances, back roads, and passages, or anything that can make a zerg train work, then it would be an interesting.

It’s as contributive as anything. The devs don’t read these forums for tips on how to improve the game. They read the posts in a statistical manner.

X ammount of posts about quitting the game.
Y ammount of posts requesting mounts.
Z ammount of posts reporting a bug.

There’s a threshold for each after which the devs become semi-responsive. Yoh’s post contribtes to the statistics of people quitting the game because of disappointment. The devs look at his post and compare his complaints to other complaints. The complains that reach a certain treshold get considered.

It’s about as contributive any anything else here.

Time gating and cost is not the ony way to make the crafting of an item difficult.

Several components can be linked to complex activities designed around game content with a horizotal difficulty. Such as long, specific dungeons with complex tasks requirig coordinated effort. timed tasks, event chains resulting in specific items that are needed in specific dungeons that produce specific items that are needed in other chains that are needed in other dngeons. A complex relationship of tasks across multile game types. Not difficult vertically, as in, not difficult in required time or cost, but in required skill, required coordination, and required understanding of specific game features.

The curret concept similar to this, as in the components of the Legendaries require item exchanged from dungeon tkens, items bought after killing the Claw of Jormag, map completion items, PvP items. But all of these items are different forms of grind. You grind dungeon tokens in repeated speedruns. You grind gold to buy the icy lodestones. You grind skill points. You grind karma. You grind obsidian. You grind all the required materials.

Literally only the map completion item is achieved through something that can be semi referred to as an “achivement”.

Xae Isareth.1364:

If you’re a casual gamer who dislike gear treadmills, raids and only play the game lightly, would you go buy a game that embraces the treadmill, is focused on endgame raids, and asks you to pay $15 a month for it?

Depends on the marketing. Currently it is known that you will be able to buy one month game cards in Wildstar for ingame cash. But even with that, its possible that the game is gonna go b2p or f2p in half a year or so. So I think the ingame game card idea was thrown there to maximalize first week profits, in other words, they indeed are going for the casual, and the casual bought Guild Wars 2 too, despite it containing an inbuilt gold seller service in the sheep clothing of the black lion trading post.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The only thing similar is that they;re both MMOs, and that’s it.

It’s basically enough because the mmo community moves from game to game trying to find the holy grail of mmorpgs that is not an addictive snorefest. That’s why mostly all the pr for new mmos cumulate in “look how unlike everything else we are”.

Some leftovers who are more prone to post-purchase rationalization are always left in each new game, but the general market, the target costumer always moves.

And the p2p model just means that publishers are making calculations to see if launching games as p2p and cashing in the monthly costs in the initial 2-6 months is more lucrative than going b2p with cash shop straight away. It just means that the game is gonna get full pr attention as an experiment, since p2p is not really sustainable today, not even with the EVE model. EVE is a very atypical game with a very atypical community.

Malediktus.9250:

Yet people still consider that stuff prestige.

For different types of people. But people who run for those material gains don’t function through positive emotions. If you are wishing for the respect of people who are bank robber bankers and thieves you are in for a ride. It is faked love. And nobody below your pay grade will look up to you for having a Rolex or a Ferrari. Only the scum of Earth that you want to avoid because they want to suck you dry of all your material gains. That’s how that part of society functions. It is the farther thing away from genuine positive feelings. It has everything to do with hatred and envy, and results in appropriate actions based on those two feelings.

A prestige in a positive sense is something like a 1st prize on the Olympics, or a Nobel Prize, or an Oscar. Something that people aspire to get for its meaning, not the material value of the gold it is made out of, because it means something about you as a person, not about your financial status that you could have acquired in any kind of evil way. You don’t get an Oscar or a Nobel prize in an evil way. They are representing symbols of the undeniable value of your skills, abilities, personality. Your essence. Other than giving you a feeling of having achieved yourself, they also initiate positive feelings in normal functioning human beings, and you only get hated and envied by the aforementioned “scum of Earth”.

In short, your example is privileges for evil people, based on fear and hate, while mine is prestige for good people, based on love and virtue.

Its two completely different things. I know society is not perfectly “there yet” to get it, so I don’t expect it to be implemented into a computer game (especially by a dev team so immersed in office politics as ANet) that’s why I didn’t go into detail in the previous post. But it’s still true.

You don’t get the love of other players in GW2 if you have a Legendary. A prestige is something like achieving Legendary Cartographer title in Guild Wars and everyone messaging at you and congratulating you. That was back then. That game displayed it in the world chat when something like that happened. And that was that title, not the “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” title. Not the grindy titles. Nobody cared about a maxed Lightbringer.

Two completely different concepts that are in no way related to each other in any way that is worth considering. They have completely different reasons, reactions, and results in society.

You wanna call one of them prestige, decide which one. But one of them sould be implemented in the game, while the other only generates elitism and further alienation of player base groups. Like the current “AC 5k only” trends, and zerker gear, and so on.

An online community is a slice of the real world community. A reflection. A miniature. But if you want to build a fun game, you should be aware of and in control of which slice you are preferring to work on.

It is the point where game developer teams who work on mmorpgs should hire sociologist. This isn’t the Tetris era anymore.

Mirta.5029:

It’s so that people would buy gems and convert them to gold. This is on one of their official advertisement pages.

Pathethic.

I didn’t even see this before.

Xae Isareth.1364:

then they’ll start thinking of DLCs and expansions.

NCsoft allowing Guild Wars 2 to compete with Wildstar?
I’d break the piggy bank and become my own publisher if I were Anet.

I don’t think these items can be called prestige. Prestige is something positive. I think when someone sees a Legendary/Ascended, they either think “that guy has too much money” or “that guy has no life”.

Prestige items are linked to achivement, which is linked to ability or skill to excell at something that others do not. Spending 18 hours a day in front of the computer is not a skill. At best, it is a lifestyle.

It is not the most grindy game ever.
It’s rather that there is only grind. So you see it everywhere.

You can do two or three things in Guild Wars 2 that are not directly related to grind. PvP, Roleplaying, and occasionally fun living story plots. And out of these only roleplaying is an MMORPG activity.

GW2 is not a good MMORPG, and it is subpar in its multiplayer/singleplayer aspects compared to Tripple A single or multiplayer games.

Silvanus.5821:

Completely agree. I have a feeling that most people in ANet that work on GW2 have never played GW1.

You can allways look at the credits and make it more than a feeling.

Algreg.3629:

… and use tools of manipulation and suggestion.

ArenaNet during Guild Wars had a completely different level of discussion with people. Relatively sensible nerfs. Good writing. Really, really cheesy cinematics and voice acting, but relatively B-grade fun story that was aware of itself. Tons of skill combinations and different builds. The people rage about that should have been the ones getting told off to play other kind of games since there were tons of games that weren’t “Build Wars”, but there was only one Guild Wars.

The only example of its species. The people who hated it had alnernatives, but the people who likeed it now don’t.

Why does every title need to please the people who want to play something other than WoW but really with the only reason being that WoW is heavily criticised? They really want to play WoW in different coatings that pretend to be not WoW. Because they feel people’s piercing eyes on them. It’s just a black sheep. That is all. I remember the release of GW2 the forums had threads like “we want mounts”. It’s a joke that’s going on here. “Next gen” is the neutered gamer equivalent of social standards.

Here’s a food of thought: If they already want to lie to the customers, at least they could have used all that “fiendish advertising” to sell Guild Wars to them. With the ammount of blatant damage control that the PR department is thinking it can get away with unnoticed, there’s really no difference in the egoism. And hell, they probably would had been successful and sell nearly the exact same system as a next gen thing.

But that requires something called a vision. That makes you cling to consistent thinking until you succeed.

Because they don’t wanna give up on the money.

This will be a short post because I have to go in about 5 minutes, but the problem is that there are lots of things in this game that are are completely free in other games.

The Wardrobe thing exists in City of Heroes (or DC Online maybe?).
Traveling costs… there werent even any in Guild Wars.
Repair is BS. They did get rid of that but they aren’t gonna get rid of the transmutation stones?

Because it’s a paywall. For gemstone shenanigans. It’s stupid, but it’s true. Arguments go left and right, but the gem stone is put into people’s face and things are behind a paywall to “subtly suggest” pulling out that credit card.

And I had done that too. I’m guilty of it too. This isn’t about that. This is about that Greed killed this game, pure devilish greed, and it’s a reanimated corpse. now. This isn’t about the game being successful (fiancially) or not. ArenaNet will likely not understand this post. Maaybe the last sentences will help.

This is about how it was not made by people who create works of art out of love, and how the world lost another good developer team. Which is sad. And maybe ArenaNet emmployees will realize by this sentance that this post was not written for them. Really all that’s left for intelligent people, and fans of Guild Wars here is to just reflect on the changes, purely out a need to vent the emotional frustration.

The only custructive thing you can say, or advise to people, is to never buy an ArenaNet game again.

Or for that matter, never again buy games that were made by a generation that was socialized to see the customer as some kind of an animal, and use tools of manipulation and suggestion.

sorudo.9054:

it’s also pretty much already in GW1, yet another feature they forgot to add in GW2.

A comparison video review is really due.

Midnight Gypsy.9360:

You got it right in the bottom half of your post, the top is just dead wrong. New playable races are a almost a sure thing at this point, they are deciding which one to add first.

Unlikely from a PR point of view. If they would have something in the works they would have shot the hype rockets up already.

The Tengu have an area ready, as if they would’ve been planned as a new race from the start, but with the team scrapping the idea of future expansions I think the idea of new races, classes and continents were also scrapped.

At least, I can’t really see the Living World teams being able to pull off anything like that.

Of course, there could be many creative ways, like adding a new continent world map but with just one area. And then adding more and more areas, like a continous exploration and expansion indo the wilderness, as cities are buit in the older areas and it would be like… well a “Living World”. Imagine the awesome experience of exploring a new continent, it doesn’t even have to be Elona or Cantha, just a big wilderness jungle place. All lvl80 insane wilderness. The lore can be that an elder dragon’s energy signals were detected there or something. And you showly progress towards the dragon as more areas are added to the continent. And it could be… a Tengu-led exploration…

Then again, I don’t work at ArenaNet. :P

It is terrible.

Weapons and armor become useless after you use them. If you buy a new one, you can throw the old one away. You have no incentive to get a new, knowing a better looking one might come later. It’s a waste of money with zero return. These money sinks do not help us. The economy is a mess anyhow. Cheaper and more accessible things mean less people having to farm, which is exactly what you wanted if I remember.

[X] Agree
[…] Disagree

Petition up.

Now I can’t wait for this hard enough.
You’re the best part of the team, Mr. Foreman.

Equinox.4968:

“It would be fun” isn’t sufficient justification for doing something so drastic as adding a new playable race.

What other reasons are there?

What? You could just make the capes back items, and that’s all. It could even be a guild craft thing. What’s difficult in that? It’s a cape model that goes to the back item slot?

I don’t buy the clipping bs either. The game is full of clipping that’s been there since launch. They would’ve fixed those already if it’s really of prime importance.

GW1 had a body size scale too.

For Charr the model can be changed entirely from cape to something else. Like a scarf. Or a ragged cape torn into two pieces that have pieces on both sides, leaving the back open. Or an armband.

You can even make more awesome capes as drops, or craft items. Exotic capes.

50% of the “effort” put into Living Hurr can be put into expanding the varyety of items and item icons in the game. Or giving special models to each exotic armors like Rurik’s or Gwen’s.

Just get a petition or something. It sad but nobody will weigh an intelligent post against thousands of idiots screaming like idiots about how they want their WoW-2.0-but-not-really-but-still-lol-I-dunno-just-add-mounts-pls-kkthxbye.

Argumentum ad populum is the only thing working.
Get a poll. A petition. Somewhere. Something.

They’re gonna add it now anyway, considering they’ll have to compete with Wildstar next year.

Nurvus.2891:

5 – There should be places like Restaurants and that you can “Cook” for, and Garrisons that you can craft gear for.
These would be handled just like the Dynamic Events that require you to deliver X items. There would be NPCs coming near the “Discipline Masters” and shouting their needs, like “Restaurant X is in need of a Chef! It’s just down the street, to the left.”

This is actually an enormously creative idea that I could not even think of! And yet so simple. I fully support this or anything of the sort. It’s great to have people like you around.

It’s something that would not be enough in and of itself either, but it would certainly contribute to a better market.

Although I’m afraid of a phenomeon I noticed where devs never implement such ideas out of fear of getting drama for blatantly stealing them. Kinda funny. And sad. Would be good to talk to dev about this one day. There’s lots of calculative corporate fear. They undervalue player good-heatedness to maximalize profit. It’s terribly ani-human-contact in an artisic indistry as art is the most humane thing ever. I think somewehere deep down both parties know that this is not right.

Yes… which is a central design flaw in my opinion, a step dowards contemporary mmo armor system that should not have been made. Still, just taking Karma out as it is now would help it a little bit. It wouldn’t save it. Thats why I added the minimum price in the second point too. Those two together may reach something. What else do you want? The perfect suggestion is still “you should’ve just remade Guild Wars with better graphics”. But that’s more like a “what if” arguent, as it is impossile to do that at this point. Personally, I would’ve used all the copious hype bandwagon commerical viral marketing on that, instead of damage control, because then there would had been no damage to control. Feeding the old system to the casual kids is easier than imagined. People eat up everything in the right coating. That’s what they do right now too. And it would had been better to the economy in general.

But anyhow, putting my ever-returning distaste apart, let’s focus on what we can still improve. What you have said is not “simple economics”. It’s not even economics. What I said was simple economics, but apparently not simpe enough, so let me simluify it even more.

“Supply is where the demand is.”

That reads: Supply should be where the demand is. Supply without demand is pointless. It is not a sign of a working economy. It is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Currently we have an overproduction market instead of a supplying market.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Just because you do not know how to, or do not believe that it matters, or do not believe that it can be changed, it doesn’t mean that people cannot make suggestions.

Olba.5376:

chronus.1326:

Suggestion: Instead of actual gear, make the karma rewards Appliable Skins, and increase the base cost of NPC Merchant gear to make people prefer to buy gear that was crafted by other players. (You obviously do not need to touch Exotic 44k karma armor.)

I don’t know if it’s the wording or the whole suggestion, but to me this just screams “I want to make easy profit by crafting!”. And honestly, that’s a bit disturbing.

No. It is literally impossible to make any profit on crafting here as the price of the created item is almost the directc sum of the prices of the individual materials, with zero margin derived from the crafting skill you have reached, meaning that it’s more fiancially benefitting to just sell the materials themselves instead of investing in a crafting tree where you cannot even earn back the ammount you have invested, as the created items are often even lesser in value than the materials used in creating them – see mid-level weaponsmithing or armorsmithing – which is not how a market functions in any society except maybe in fascist dictatorships run by maffia cartels.

And if you are arguing about the slots getting loaded because more people will actually see a point in trading their hand made things; the Karma change would actually create a higher incentive to buy hand-crafted things, and they would be still be cheaper than NPC Merchant items, while Karma would give only skins, save for 44k exotics which is endgame. Which in exchange would create an incentive in people to make and sell those items, which is the point of an economy.

Currently, people are selling all the things that they do not need, instead of creating the things that other people need. It is all backwards. The high-quantity bot farming groups which control the prices are a fact. People do not hate profit. They want to make profit. Undercutting is normal, but the prices have gone so low in a year that the direct control is obvious. Nobody but high-quantity farming communities make any money out of this, most of which they spend on illegal gold selling anyway. It is all kitten and cancer.

Before anything, I want to say that I read the update notes for the August patch, and as a former GW player I APPRECIATE the effort put into elaborating the crating system and nerfing CoF.

Huge changes. More importantly, it carries the message that you are still willing to make huge changes to core game systems. It is partially what gave be the incentive to write this post. But I’ll get to the case.

After a year – and purely from the love of my heart, with the intent to help – I would like to point out two things that I noticed about the crafting system (and this is regardless of the upcoming uptade), which may be what is conributing to the faulties of crafting here, and two suggestions. May it help you greatly.

• 1: The way how Karma works is pernicious to Crafting:
  Two things: You use money for everything. You use karma for less things.
  When buying the next level of gear merely for the stats, people will prefer to buy Karma gear because they usually have an abundance of Karma. This devalues mid-level crafted items, greatly. They are practically worthless.

Suggestion: Instead of actual gear, make the karma rewards Appliable Skins, and increase the base cost of NPC Merchant gear to make people prefer to buy gear that was crafted by other players. (You obviously do not need to touch Exotic 44k karma armor.)

• 2: Syndicates are running the Trading Post:
  The market is being manipuated high time. The facts are the following: People farm materials with bots and make items with zero material costs, at a much higher rate than any normal human can, undercutting everyone else to the extent that there are actual items at the trading post that you can sell to the NPC Merchant for a higher price. Which is distasteful. There isn’t any level of fairness here, and frankly, banning bots is not doing jack to how well the factual Black Market is functioning. Leave struggling with the symptom. Simply destroy the incetive.

Suggestion: A small ammount of control to the market; put a minimum price on the items, based on item level. There has to be actual profit made from crafting, even if people buy all the materials, because there is an element that you did not calculate in, which is skill. A lvl 400 Cook can craft items that a lvl 1 cannot. That skill has a fiancial value. You have to calculate that into the equation. It’s not only about the ingredient costs. People and their skills are materials aswell, and the curret system practically devalues the human element.

• Additionally: The syndicates who control the market have to go. You have to think up a working solution that kills their incentive.

I hope I made some people think over there. Take increased notion of the whole Karma part.

You don’t have to respond, but take notes and discuss them. It’s worth the time.
You are welcome. I hope my post was helpful.

Lots of fun and kittens.

[[[ continuation of the previous post because of length limit ]]]

Mirta.5029:

5. A) Vanilla WoW used its open world for large scale battles between horde and alliance (guilds organized full group attacks on the opposing force cities) as far as I remember meta events are still a viable source of income and they’re in the open world C) what do you want to use the open world for?

Nothing. The Open World is a terrible concept that is only good because it is said to be good. It is advertized to be good. Nobody actually cares about meeting other people out there on an emotional level. I never gone “Oh, a player! So interesting!”, you never gone “Oh, a player! So interesting!”, nobody in the history of fmmorpgs ever gone “Oh, a player! So interesting!”, except maybe in the very first mmo, when the entire concept was new. There awas absolutely nothing wrong with the instance system of Guild Wars, and nobody can come up with anything that the Open World offers which is greater than what it takes away from. It killed the purpose of cities. In Guild Wars the cities were always full of people and they felt like actual cities, because that’s where the players met. The outposts felt like outposts, with a few people, and they also acted like waypoints.

At the very best, here’s how it should’ve been done:

• Cities and Outposts as separate instances and free waypoints.
• Also open world area out there.

But ArenaNet wated to Outposts to be part of the event system so they became just spots on the open world, which in the end didn’t make them anything but good farming events in Orr. The end. People are awfully pragmatic. After the novelity dies down what they like is convenience.

Guild Wars was convenient.

• Outsposts/Cities = good way to find people. Free travel. There in a sec. Bunch of people to talk to, socialize, ect, dance, play instruments, have fun.
  Guild Wars 2:
• Money grabbing WP cost. Cities are empty, save for a few people banking or crafting or exploring the cities. Everyone is running somewhere, everoyne is in movement. The open world is a bunch of people running around too, barely communicating, and not really caring about each other in general.

It’s like a bunch of one-nighters compared to a long term relationship.
Sure, got laid, but something is just missing.

6. Well done, both games (like any other MMO) have a community. However the communities are indeed different from each other. To say that two communities are the same is the same thing as to say that every human being is the same.

There are similarities which bother people because they hint at the game no longer being made for them. It’s like Channel suddenly stops making female stuff and starts making soccer balls and baseball bats. Imagine the outrage.

[[[ continuation of the previous post because of length limit ]]]

I have played many MMOs throughout my life. I have played Everquest, Everquest 2, Lineage II, D&D Online, Anarchy Online, DC Universe, City of Heroes, EVE Online, Guild Wars, and back then (even though it’s not an MMO per se, but very similar in a way), Diablo II. If you believe any of that, and assume that I have seen countless different systems emerge and fall, then hear me out and listen.

I know when I see resemblances, and I know how all the resembling things usually have the same goal and therefore the same fate too.

Fact is: You may refuse to accept that, but game was not build to last. It was built to bomb the market, steal as much money as humanly possible through the gem shop, and then disappear into the abyss if it cannot farm the market any longer. That is the “new marketing model”.

Mirta.5029:

2. Not needed. People bellow level 80 enter WvW and still do fine. Even if you will manage to get a 1v1 fight there (which is unlikely), you’ll still have so much dodges, evades, immobilizes and blocks that the increased damage from an ascended wearer will not do a difference if he couldn’t hit you.

None of those really matter. WvW is a zergfest. Statistically speaking, every zerg has the same mobilizers and damage and healing. In the end it all comes down to numbers. A sad truth that everone knows.

3. 20 runs of any dungeon to get full exotics, 20 runs of fotm to get 2 rings, 30 dailies and logging in once in a while to do a bounty with your guild to get earrings. How can you grind 24/7 here exactly?

By leveling up a character, or die-of-boredom trying.

4. That would be PvP and WvW, but yes, dungeons are a part of an end game, however point me to a single game whose dungeons are not repetitive and always changing. The last time I checked no MMO had randomly generated dungeons.

All of them are. But Guild Wars offerend many other things after 20, not just Dungeons. Dungeons were a small portion of the game, and other than FoW and UW the traditional dungeons came in with Eye of the North. Before that, there wasn’t even anything like the sort. Guild Wars 2 is a downgrade compared to that.

Mirta.5029:

1. Where is the requirement to get the previous tier to get the next one again? As far as I remember you can jump straight to pinks if you do dailies while leveling.

Encoded into your inability to strive towards anything but that. Your “end game” is literally just that. And hear me out, before you jump into the apologist defense again.

Guild Wars’ gameplay was mostly about lvl 20. At lvl 20, your character’s developement did not stop.

• You didn’t have all the skills yet = you didn’t have the full potential of your character at your disposal, you saw an endless ammount of new build combinations to try out when you get your hands on skills, and the double-profession system multiplied that with 8 other over-100 skills sets. After 7 years, people still surprised me with completely new build combinations that did completely different things, and which I could never think of coming up with. And all that was far, far after you reached lvl 20. In a way, we can say that lvl 20 was the only level in that game. Everything before lvl 20 was just tutorial. After Factions, you could reach 20 in a day. About 70% of Guild Wars’ gameplay and content came after lvl 20. The Elite Armor sets that were hard to get, and so on. Your character was still progressing at that point, your quest log was filled with quests. You could go back to starting areas and help out people, and it felt awesome to stroll through Ruins of Surmia, because you felt your aquired power and achivements as you mashed in everything with one hit. That is an “achivement”, not a title under your name that nobody cares about. The people who hate that feeeling are insecure people who were bullied in WoW. I never bullied anyone. I helped people. I gave them platinums, I gave them greens. With a Warrior, I ran them to Lion’s Arc. That, my friend, was a helpful community, and helping others had a feeling of being awesome.

In comparison:

• About 70% of Guild Wars 2’s game content stops at lvl 40. At lvl 40, you will have all your skills unlocked if you complete areas and gather skill points too. No profession specific armors, and 90% of the medium armor looks pirate themed. They are all easy to get, and the only thing you have to do is farm dungeons endlessly. There are 3 routes per dungeon, meaning that you will have to gather a total of 1211 tokens for a full set, which is about 20 runs. At the end of it, you will be sure that you will never want to touch that dungeon ever again, especially if it’s mother-kittening Ascalon Catacombs, Crucible of Eternity, or Arah. The reason why half the population is running around in Flame Citadel armor is not because it looks the coolest (no pun intended) of all. It’s because Dungeons feel tedious, not “fun”. Because the “difficulty” is that the enemies have 9734234134134234 health. That’s it. Then make it easy, I don’t care, even that is better than hitting the same thing for half an hour. And you are scaled to level, “so you could replay old content”. That’s actually even a subtle way of saying that there is no new content after 80. “Go back to that area that you ave already 100% completed. Maybe there’s a tree that you haven’t peed on yet.”

If you enjoy farming Dungeons, you might aswell stop reading here and reiterate that claim that this game has no Raids. Uuuh, helloo? The dungeons are Raids. That’s what hey are. There is no difference. Guild Wars did not have that. And even if at some parts it did, like people speed clearing Fissure of Woe, it was for money and loot for Armor that was almost impossible for anyone to get unless you didn’t see it as farming, in which case in the eyes of the community you were seen as a WoW kid. But that was separated from the rest of the community’s gameplay. Yes, there were people running around with spears that cost 3 million and 3 Obsidian Armor Sets and maxed out Zaishen Title. There was free will. You could do that. But also could could never touch it ever, and still have years of content to occupy yourself with.

Guild Wars 2 does not have that option. The only thing you have is Dungeons. Personally, I hate the Dungeons. I hated them in Guild Wars too. And guess what, I still had fun because I was maxing out may skill hunter title, and coming up with new combinations. Guild Wars pleased a plethora of different people without forcing a gameplay on anyone that he did not like. You could buy all the little skills in a PvP pack for yourself if you hated gathering. Granted you could only use them in PvP but hey, if you hated gathering them, you were most likely more into PvP anyway. It was good design choice.

Guild Wars Content:

1==20========20

Guild Wars 2 Content:

1=======80===80

You also cannot see the forest from the trees. It is not about wether the game pleases everyone or not. From your post, I guess I can gather that you did not like Guild Wars 1.

Then I can reverse the question back to you. Who the kitten baked potato do you think you are, that you have a higher right to be pleased by this franchise that us? Go and play with some other franchise that you liked, and let us have the continuation of the only kitten baked potato game in existence of its own kind.

You hijacked this franchishe, and now you claim it?

Guild Wars 1 is dead. It was killed by Guild Wars 2. You left us with nothing, for the sake of a slighly upgraded WoW, with some aftertaste of GW here and there.

Are you seriously arguing here, while all people were asking for GvG and Guild Houses. Do you hate GvG and Guild Houses? Did you hate them? If not, then repeat to me your problem. I do not think that you have any idea what you are even talking about. I do in fact believe that you have no ability to separate people who are GW1 players and WoW kiddies squeeling for mounts on sight. In fact, I’m beginning to doubt that you did not just pull it out of your kitten that you have ever played Guild Wars 1. This is the internet after all, you only had so say, right? And suddenly aaaal arguments are justifiiiiied.

Please, humour me, what are the aspects of Guild Wars 1 that you HATED so much, and which we are requesting right now.

Please, list all the things that we want back, and which you HATED.

Let us, and let the devs see all those 3 things that you hated, from our list of 2516.

And then let me show you how the addition of 90% of these things will absolutely not change your gameplay experience at all. It will just improve ours.

Arkanon.7068:

A point I want to make is I see a lot of people complaining about GW2 on the forums, and the way they present their ideas and complaints is as if they speak for the majority of us playing the game, and that if their own personal list of dislikes isn’t addressed or changed to suit their own desires, it will be the end of gw2.

To be honest if half the things that the minority of the loudest whiners who complain were to get what they wanted implemented into GW2, the game would be a lot worse off for it “in my opinion”. I certainly would not play it if gear treadmills were introduced similar to other games such as WoW. I don’t want to play a WoW clone with better graphics. I want to play GW2 and the way this game is heading, I’m very optimistic for the future and am very happy with the direction GW2 is going at this time.

What does gear treadmills have to do with Guild Wars 1?

What I feel is that the people who are still defending this game (who I also see as a minority, since all my friends and everyone I know have already stopped playing) are the people who never played Guild Wars 1 and the only thing that they are afraid of is Guild Wars 2 becoming another WoW.

Guild Wars 1 was even farther away from WoW that this game is.
This game was a step towards WoW.

We are not really amused by your amusement. You feel improvement from quality0 to quality1, while we started out at quality7 and feel a loss of quality by an ammount of 6. And you are not getting it because you are satisfied with your “improvements” because you are afraid of loosing the litte impriovement that you got. But that little improvement is not an improvement to us, because it only made the game one inch better than the plethorea of games that we did not even have the taste to touch.

That’s what we feel.

If the game would be more like Guild Wars 1, in this open world system, with the dynamic events and so on, you would just like it even better. You just don’t know that because you cannot even imagine something that good.

maddoctor.2738:

chronus.1326:

The common sense in these people are just completely missing.

You mean the common sense of people who were asking irrelevant questions on a livestream about a new guild puzzle? Yes it is missing, I logged for a little while during the livestream and I was annoyed by all those questions, they were deleted for a reason, you want to ask for other features, do it through proper means, the livestream was about the new guild puzzle and the guild puzzle alone, it just takes a little bit of common sense to understand what kind of question you should be making.

Draconic dictatorship? They were doing their job keeping the chat clean of irrelevant questions.

That argument may hold up in court where the judges are the representatives of law, but not here in Babylon where the judges are the people whose comments were deleted.

Values only exist where people acknowledge them. That stream was interesting, but it had no acknowleged value next to the questions that people wanted to ask.

People wanted answers, they did not get them on the forums, they did not get them from mails. They used the closest medium in proximity where direct contact with the devs was avalable. Because they did not get their anaswers again, this further adds fuel to dissatisfaction.

Vayne.8563:

And the story…well, the story in Guild Wars 1 wasn’t all that. I don’t know why people think the story was so great. Take Prophecies. People complained about Rurik. They hated him. A lot of people were happy he died. Anyone with half a brain new the white mantle was evil…why didn’t we? Are our characters that stupid? I knew Vizier Khilbron was a mistake too, why didn’t my character.

Who the hell cares about Rurik? Rukik was like 10% of the story. He dies at the end of the very first Arc. The story had the main villain (Vizier) trick you into allying with him so you can kill the good guys (the Mursaat) who are protecting the doomsday door so the villain can get his hands on the Titans. You worked on the bad side since you left Kryta. It was an awesome story.